The 3-D ionization structure of NGC 6818: A Planetary Nebula threatened by recombination

Abstract

Long-slit NTT+EMMI echellograms of NGC 6818 (the Little Gem) at nine equally spaced position angles, reduced according to the 3-D methodology introduced by Sabbadin et al. (\cite{Sabbadin00}a,b), allowed us to derive: the expansion law, the diagnostics and ionic radial profiles, the distance and the central star parameters, the nebular photo-ionization model, the 3-D reconstruction in He II, [O III] and [N II], the multicolor projection and a series of movies. The Little Gem results to be a young (3500 years), optically thin (quasi-thin in some directions) double shell (M_ion =~ 0.13 M_sun) at a distance of 1.7 kpc, seen almost equatorial on: a tenuous and patchy spherical envelope (r =~ 0.090 pc) encircles a dense and inhomogeneous tri-axial ellipsoid (a/2 =~ 0.077 pc, a/b =~ 1.25, b/c =~ 1.15) characterized by a hole along the major axis and a pair of equatorial, thick moustaches. NGC 6818 is at the start of the recombination phase following the luminosity decline of the 0.625 M_sun central star, which has recently exhausted the hydrogen shell nuclear burning and is rapidly moving toward the white dwarf domain (log T_* =~ 5.22 K; log L_*/L_sun =~ 3.1). The nebula is destined to become thicker and thicker, with an increasing fraction of neutral, dusty gas in the outermost layers. Only over some hundreds of years the plasma rarefaction due to the expansion will prevail against the slower and slower stellar decline, leading to a gradual re-growing of the ionization front. The exciting star of NGC 6818 (m_V =~ 17.06) is a visual binary: a faint, red companion (m_V =~ 17.73) appears at 0.09 arcsec in PA =190degr , corresponding to a separation ge 150 AU and to an orbital period ge 1500 years.

Based on observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla Observatories, under programme ID 65.I-0524, and on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Institute (observing programs GO 7501 and GO 8773; P.I. Arsen Hajian). STScI is operated by the association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under the NASA contract NAS 5-26555. We have applied the photo-ionization code CLOUDY, developed at the Institute of Astronomy of the Cambridge University.